The horizontal rays crossed eighty miles of sea, and for a moment the
ghostly glimmer of Corsica appeared like a mirage and then disappeared
under the claret-coloured flood. My companion talked on: “For me it has
always been better to have played and lost than never to have played at
all. That is even the reason I never married. I felt I had a perfect
right to lose all I had, provided I had no dependents. I had very few
friends either, and I have managed never to borrow, and I have played
for twenty years. I have nothing on my conscience or, for the matter of
that, on my bank-account now. I have had my great days and known the
ecstasy of sudden wealth as no gold-digger has ever felt it--thousands
made in one evening. I have taken zero twice running with a doubled
stake. You have no idea what transcendent bliss that brings a gambler’s
brain. I have done best when I trusted to the inspiration of the
moment. There is luck, and there is bad luck, but that is really as far
as I have ever been able to get. And luck often comes to those who feel
the fascination of the table least. I have seen a man casually back the
winning number and stroll off before it was declared. People are always
forgetting their stakes, curiously enough, and there are always harpies
who watch on the chance of claiming them. The croupier cannot refuse
a claim. I do not think I ever forgot a stake. I can remember all the
winning numbers on my great days still.”
I asked him what the pleasures of memory meant to him, and he confessed
that they were considerable. I asked him if he believed in any gambling
superstition, whether he thought sitting round a gambling-table ever
produced any result one could compare with spiritualism; for instance,
the result of touching a dead gambler’s blood, which we had witnessed
an hour or two before.
“No,” he said, “but I have come to the conclusion that it often makes
a difference to the luck at a table who is sitting at it. Some people
cause others to win. That is how it works out.” I asked him if in all
his experience he could think of an instance when a psychic influence
had been at work. He sat back thinking. Then he said quietly: “I do
not answer your question. I cannot say yes or no, so I say nothing.”
“Then you must have met something that was inexplicable,” I pressed.
“Perhaps,” he answered; “but I have never told anybody.” I knew my
only chance of hearing it was to say nothing or lead the conversation
elsewhere, so I just waited. He got up and began walking again. When
we came in front of the pigeon-shooting green, which juts like a tiny
grass-green arena into the sea, he stopped and pointed to a corner of
the fence. A pigeon popped out of a trap, took flight, and fell to an
invisible gun. Another flew out, but fell the wrong side of the fence
into the open sea, where fishermen were waiting to retrieve it from
boats. Each marksman was allowed two shots to bring the pigeon down.
It seemed deadly monotonous. Then my friend spoke: “That is where the
first incident happened.” I knew now I had only to keep silent to hear
what he had to say. “I used to shoot pigeons a good deal in company
with a friend of mine. When we lost at the tables we often made good by
winning the prize for shooting. I sometimes won, but my friend never.
Whatever he gambled at he lost, roulette, _chemin-de-fer_, baccarat,
and dice. He fell into the hands of the sharpers, a gang who induced
him for a long time to believe that he was winning. Then they played
him with loaded dice and he lost a fortune. One evening I was with him
and the dice fell six times the same against him and every time for
double or quits. He challenged the dice and they agreed to saw the
ivory cubes asunder. A third party was called in and in breathless
silence the dice were broken up. My friend picked up each piece with
a face whiter than ivory himself, but there was no suspicion of a
fraud to be found. If they had been playing with loaded dice they had
substituted others. Sleight of hand can work wonders. I have no doubt
my friend’s challenge had been perfectly justified, but he was up
against the deliberate wickedness of this world. For a moment he turned
over the fragments of the dice. The scoundrel who had been playing
with him smiled and murmured: ‘_C’est drôle, pas un grain de plomb_’
(‘That’s funny, not a grain of lead’). My friend put down his bank-book
and went out. That evening he killed himself.
“After I had seen to his burying I felt miserable and went for a long
trip. When I returned I instinctively made my way to Monte Carlo.
I could not change my thoughts or get my friend out of my mind,
so I decided to return to the scenes of our long companionship. I
immediately found that my luck had improved at the tables. Then a very
strange thing happened. I sent for my guns and entered for the _grand
prix_ at pigeon-shooting. I found myself in winning fettle. You always
know at the tables or on the green if you are in a successful mood.
On the first day I killed fourteen pigeons out of fifteen. The second
day saw me in the running for the championship. If you miss five birds
you have to withdraw from the shooting, and soon only four guns were
left. In the end two of us were left. We had each shot twenty-four out
of twenty-six. Then the other missed and I only had to kill one bird
to win. Seconds are long on such occasions and my eye was caught by
a little sailing-boat out to sea. I could not get my eye off it and
out flew the pigeon, not like an easy owl but like a flighting snipe.
Ping! I missed my first shot and he swerved. Then I fired to the other
side. Ping! I thought, in fact I was sure, I had missed, but no, I had
just done the trick. As he flew over the fence he suddenly shot low
as though something rose in his path, struck the top of the fence,
and fell stone-dead on the right side of the line. I was heartily
congratulated by everyone on my prowess. I can tell you it was one of
the good moments of my life and as the retriever brought back my last
bird I strolled to the man in charge to see where I had hit my lucky
bird. The dog man was handling the pigeon all over. I asked him if I
hit the head or the body. He began plucking the feathers. When the bird
was bare he looked up with a perplexed grin and said: ‘_C’est drôle,
pas un grain de plomb!_’ As soon as I heard the fatal words I walked
away feeling sick. I did not shoot a pigeon again for many a long day,
not until I was absolutely in want of money. And for months I tried to
get those words out of my head.
“Years passed, but I never would let my mind dwell too long on the
reason why that last pigeon could have shied and knocked its brains on
the fence for my special benefit. It was possible that my last shot
passed close overhead and drove it downward with the shock it caused
in the air. I have heard of duck being killed by the sheer force of a
gun’s explosion without being struck by the pellets. So I attributed
my good fortune to a combination of natural reasons and my own skill.
And the years passed. I went on gambling and gambling, and I must say
I had begun to forget my companion of other days. But one evening at
Monte Carlo sitting at a table I caught sight of a face opposite which
instantly telegraphed my friend back to me. It was the scoundrel who
had cheated him at dice of all his money and indirectly of his life.
He was obviously down on his luck, shabbily dressed and playing small
stakes with furtive apprehension. I know that look so well. A man often
has it the first time he throws a stake. He generally has it when he
throws his last. I could see that he had not recognised me, but to my
horror, when I had a run of luck, he took special notice and came up
to address me. He began talking about a system of his own in which he
suggested that I should take a share. However, my own was working very
well that day and I played on till I had won five thousand francs.
“When I came back to my hotel I was surprised to be told that a
friend of mine was waiting in my room for me, and even more so to
find that this ugly customer had followed me out of the Casino and
somehow discovered where I was staying, for while I strolled home he
had skipped ahead and imposed on the concierge with some trumped-up
tale. Anyhow, he had been admitted and was there, staking his life and
liberty on the chance of making me disgorge a little of my winnings.
As he had a revolver pointing at me from the moment I entered my room,
I would have been inclined to buy him off as cheaply as I could. But I
remembered, what he did not, that I had a blood feud with him of many
years’ standing. My revolver was in my outside pocket and we fired
about simultaneously. I missed him, shattering the window behind, but
he hit me in the shoulder. His pellet ran under my shoulder-blade like
a knife. We stood facing each other and aiming. I was trying to fire,
but something held me like a vice, and I could not. Every second I
expected he would shoot me through the head. I could see his fingers
twitching round the stock of his gun. But as I covered him I noticed a
horrible look come into his features, and, if I was held, he was held
doubly. Though I had missed him clean, a look of fear shot through his
eyes, not the fear of a coward or a fool, or even the fear of one man
of another, but the veritable fear of the evil for the Evil One when he
cheats them at the end. He was staring over my shoulder into the empty
bedroom behind me with glazed eyes and a tremor running through his
body. He never said a word but fell back dead!
“Just then the concierge and the police threw open the door and I found
myself arrested. I declined to tell my story except in the presence
of a British consul, and was taken first to a doctor, who found my
wound slight, and then to the guard-house, where I was detained for
the night, but I must confess I never slept with a lighter conscience.
In the morning there was an inquiry before the authorities and I saw
from the first that I had matters in my own hand. It was shown that
I had left the Casino a winner and my assailant a heavy loser, that
he had made his way on a false excuse into my room and that I had
been found wounded. There was every suspicion that he had provoked
the quarrel. I was only anxious that the affair should be taken down
in black and white for my future good name, and I was quite ready to
be accused and saddled with an act of justifiable manslaughter. The
magistrates after consultation with the police said that they would
be delighted to release me, but that they would be much obliged if for
the purposes of their report I would tell them exactly how I had killed
the deceased. I pointed to my revolver lying on the commissary’s desk.
‘No, _monsieur_,’ I was politely told, and they all shook their heads
mysteriously. ‘No, _monsieur_, you may have fired, but you must have
killed him in some other way.’ I looked bewildered. Then the commissary
went on in a quiet voice to say that they had found no bullet-hole, and
he ended: ‘_C’est drôle, pas un grain de plomb!_’ But, whether from
loss of blood or excitement, I had fainted.”
AT THE HIGH TABLE
The port was passing at the High Table of St. Zacchaeus’ College in
the University of Cambridge, port not as diners at Claridge’s or the
Ritz know port, but grand old College port that deceased Bursars,
untroubled by wife or work, had spent time and taste laying down in
the College cellars in the fifties and sixties. Nobody knew how much
of the best survived there, but regularly at the great College Feasts
of St. Zacchaeus, such as his _Nativitas_ or the anniversary of the
Translation of his Relic from the local Cathedral to the mediæval
College founded in his name, as well as on the day marked curiously in
the Calendar of the late or pseudo-Lincoln Use, “_Sanctus Zacchaeus
inter sycamoris_,” the best and most wonderful of ports appeared at
the High Table. Each of the older Dons sipped the cloistered nectar as
though it was his last glass, and guests made gentle inquiry of its
abundancy or likelihood of appearance at the Feasts of the following
year. There was no certainty, but it was rumoured that a Junior Bursar
had boasted--in his cups--that enough remained to flood the front court
of the College unto one and three-quarter inches deep. But he was not a
mathematician!
The port was passing and three times the hospitable Master of St.
Zacchaeus’ had filled his glass and mine. Since the War the College
Feasts had been kept very quietly, and the younger Fellows elected
since that sanguine deluge were already rising and asking the
Master’s leave to return to their studies. They were an entirely new
type compared to the mottle-faced old Dons; less human and far more
efficient. The Master contemplated their departure good-humouredly.
“They are a far harder working lot than we ever were,” he mentioned,
“though they do rather resemble hair-dressers’ assistants. Praiseworthy
young men and very concentrated in their ways. That young gentleman who
has refused port, was, I believe, once a Canadian cowboy, but after a
distinguished service in the Army took advantage of the call to ‘Hands
across the Sea’ to study Law with us, and so successfully that we made
him a Fellow. Though he keeps his hands off the port he is no milkmaid.
In fact, I believe he came to one of his colleagues, who had been kind
and lent him books, and offered to arrange the disappearance of any
person to whom he had most objection in the University.”
The Master was in talking mood and several of us collected round him.
“Strange times are upon us, gentlemen, but no doubt we seemed just as
strange to the generation that went before us. I have lived to see a
race of Undergraduates who do not go to Chapel, and of Dons who have
invested their Fellowships in wives or motor-cars. I really feel that
the Don who cranks his own car has forded the Rubicon.” And he laughed
pleasantly at his own little joke. We laughed hugely.
We sat back against the old red-leathered chairs on the dais under the
solemn dust-laden pictures of the holy or unholy founders (according as
politics or religion might move the mind of the spectator) and watched
the last flicker of the sunset stir through the coloured oriel-window
and reflect itself in the great West window of the Chapel. For modern
glass it was very beautiful. The Chapel was of course mediæval, but
the old stained glass, together with the Relic of Saint Zacchaeus, had
been barbarously destroyed by the infamous iconoclast Dowsing in the
seventeenth century. But it was piously held that the big sycamore
growing in the Fellows’ Garden had sprung from the ashes of the saint
and it was solemnly watered and secretly cherished as a rival to
Milton’s mulberry and Newton’s apple tree in neighbouring colleges.
With the era of Gothic revivals and restorations the glass had been
replaced in the mullioned windows. The West window was certainly very
magnificent, but the choice of subjects had always puzzled me as an
Undergraduate. They seemed such an incongruous selection, but there
they were in their full Munich blazonry! Like most Undergraduates it
had not been for me to inquire or question. But as the dying light
threw them into rainbow splendour, I ventured to ask the Master whether
the subjects had been chosen by the Donor or by the College. I always
understood the window had been given by some old retired Fellow long
deceased. For answer the Master merely passed the port again and asked
me whether I had a sufficiently low opinion of Royal Commissioners,
who had come to harrow his last years upon earth. I replied that
when Commissioners began to inquire into the finances and statutes
of Colleges like St. Zacchaeus I regarded them as somewhat above the
common run of burglars, but infinitely lower, morally and socially,
than the Familiars of the Inquisition. With which reply he seemed far
from displeased.
About ten minutes later he gave me a signal proof of his pleasure,
for he took up my previous question concerning the West window and
said: “Yes, they are very curious and unexpected subjects to find in a
College Chapel. It can only be said of them that they are scriptural.
But their display there is not meaningless,” and he began unweaving one
of those curious stories which lie in the experience or recollection
of the wisest and most venerable of us. Beneath the outer crust of
stratified anecdote and ordinary gossip there lies some story in almost
every man’s life, which he is generally as reluctant to dispense as a
cellarer his best port. It is often a ghost story, and most men are
unwilling to confess that the inexplicable has ever crossed their
plain path of life. Or, like much in Heaven and earth, a streak of the
so-called indelicate gives it a taste that is not always agreeable. But
in Life and in Literature, in books sacred or profane, in dealing with
God or with mankind, these matters must be accepted as an essential
part of the Divine dispensation or of human nature. It is not necessary
to make them seem the sole circumstance or interest of our minds, but
it is difficult to go far in Life or Literature without realising and
if possible understanding them. Sex is the quintessence of the Body
just as ghosts are distillations of the spirit.
Wise is the man who without seeking either is prepared to meet them
spadewise, that is to say knowing how to recognise and describe a spade
as a spade. And the old Master from whom I had never heard a word
touching either the weird or the sexual side of life began quite simply
to talk about both.
“In the old days, before the last Royal Commission interfered with the
working of University life, I must admit that a great deal required
reform, though reform is one of the words I dislike most in the
language. For instance, this was a College of unmarried men entirely;
and at the time of the Dissolution, for how else can I describe an era
when our Fellows were, not entirely owing to their own fault, very
dissolute, I am sorry to say that this College provided not a Boathouse
on the River or a Cricket Pavilion nearer home, but frankly a brothel
in Barnwell--for the elder members of course.”
The last light of evening sank into the unrecognisable panes of the
Chapel window and the porters were lighting the gas jets in the Court.
The Master’s words seemed a bitter commentary on the history of this
home of peace and learning and spiritual refreshment. It seemed
incredible that it could have been so, but in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries all things were possible in an English University.
I waited a little expectantly for him to continue. “Men came up from
the great public schools and settled down upon the bounty of the past.
There was little competition among them either here or in the outside
world. They lived lives of leisure in College like their relations
in family livings and squires’ pews, and both their minds and bodies
went to seed. Occasionally there was a great flash of scholarship in
the void, like Porson--a rare flash in the Academic pan. For the most
part they turned queer or stagnant or ridiculous. There was nothing
to occupy them. Some sank under the college wines like a rich-flowing
river of Lethe. Statutes hedged them and custom prescribed them a rut,
which was stupid as well as narrow. But before they became decayed
curios they were men like us all, and when they came up and settled
down to celibacy without idealism, and study without enthusiasm, and
manhood without athletics, well, what could you expect without a
certain amount of moral wreckage? The College, which always enjoyed a
noble income, allowed them to overstep certain Statutes both human and
divine, and handsomely too. Young and vigorous men, cut off from life
by rule, were, so to speak, initiated into the mysteries of life by
their colleagues. Frankly our Fellows often lived in sin.
“It was all very irregular. Of course, it was not common or general,
but no doubt Barnwell had its convenience in saving us from scandal
within the College. Whether it was regarded as a luxury or a necessity,
the College afforded it. Again I say that those days were far from
being our days. Englishmen were freer of speech and action then. I
appreciate the great change that has now come for the better. It is
right that Dons should be allowed to marry.”
Darkness had fallen upon the beautiful pile of pinnacles and towers
outside, and the silver candlesticks on the High Table threw but a
feeble and ironical little light into the court so lately deluged
with successive hours of sunlight, stark, golden or rubicund in turn.
But the hours of sun and sundial had passed, and we were sitting into
the hours that are illumined by electric bulbs and counted upon the
mechanical faces of clocks. The Master was trying to bring himself back
into a forgotten era. His speech flowed precisely. His choice of words
did not fail. He was reckoned an accomplished after-dinner speaker, and
there were few College Halls whose rafters and gilded lanterns had not
rung at some time to laughter and applause evoked by his rich store of
the academical anecdote.
He continued: “When the Dons were compelled to be celibate, matters
were strangely arranged, as I say. In those days there came to this
College one of the finest spirits that have ever been cased in a human
body. He was a Greek in body and mind, and he knew his Greek as few of
his generation. He came here conquering and to conquer. Mentally and
athletically he was capable of anything. But we did not encourage him.
If he wished to read for the University prizes, well and good. Nobody
prevented him. And if he wished to row in the University boat, well
and good. As a matter of fact he did neither. Whatever he touched, we
saw him take up with tremendous enthusiasm. And then unfortunately,
when it seemed likely that he would remain as a Fellow with us and pass
permanently into our Society, he was taken by one of us to this house
in Barnwell--not that it was anything unnatural or strange in those
days, nor do I suppose that it would be unnatural at any time, but it
would be thought nowadays stranger than fiction.
“I believe it was his best friend who took him and introduced and
initiated him to those mysteries of creation with which the Creator
invested the human race. There he made a liaison with a woman who
matched him, not in learning, but certainly in intelligence, and
surpassed him in physical powers. When he returned to College he was
far from quiescent, and related his adventure rapturously to his
friends, concluding with the mediæval snatch, ‘_Mihi est propositum in
taberna mori_.’ He said this several times as though he meant it. He
was one of those men who carry out what they take up with all their
might. He threw himself into his liaison with the energy of one sex and
the intensity of the other. And our College life sped upon its way.
“One night at a very late hour the College porter was roused by the
bell at the outside gates, and admitted a member of the College whom
he was too sleepy himself to identify. But he was sure that it was
the only time the bell was rung after twelve during that night. Under
subsequent question no member of the College confessed returning late
that night. The College has never been one to retire or rise early, and
that night at two o’clock I crossed the Court, and I met the man I have
been speaking of. He was walking quietly towards his rooms. His fine
brow and athletic tread stamped the encounter in my mind. I was not
mistaken, and I never doubted that it was he, and I was afterwards able
to swear that I had seen him at that hour. It was about the same hour
that the porter opened the front gate.
“The next morning we were informed that our bright companion was lying
dead in Barnwell, and that the Borough Police were taking possession
of his body. Armed with our special privileges and statutes, several
of us, including the dead man’s friend, made our way into that suburb
which has never ceased to hold sad associations for me. We identified
him lying there with a rapt and, I thought, slightly mocking expression
on his face. There was a terrible beauty written upon it, and his
friend was deeply affected, for he knelt down and began praying aloud,
at least we imagined they were prayers he uttered, though from time to
time we overheard like a cruel antiphon the words ‘_Mihi est propositum
in taberna mori_.’ Suddenly we realised how the dead man’s idle wish
had come true and smitten him to dust.